The Bad Idea of Daylight-Saving Time

The faceless system that determines our taxes also decides how much daylight we are allowed and when we may enjoy it.

By

Amanda Foreman

Updated Nov. 18, 2013 12:00 p.m. ET

Every November, a great theft is perpetrated against hundreds of millions of innocent people. They are robbed of an hour of afternoon sunlight by the government decree that divides the year into standard and daylight-saving time. The switch to standard time occurs precisely at the wrong moment, when the days are already growing shorter.

The arguments used to justify the DST arrangement always employ the language of cost, savings and safety. But, as the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies once observed: "At the back of...